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The Ontario Dental Association is calling on the provincial government to step up and do more for kids from low-income families.

It’s launched an awareness campaign to help Ontarians understand what it considers a dangerous funding gap in public dental care. The ODA says dentists across the province treat about 200,000 kids under the Healthy Smiles Ontario (HSO) program, but that more needs to be done to ensure all 500,000 eligible children and youth get the care they need.

In 2016, six publicly-funded dental programs were combined into the new Healthy Smiles Ontario program. At the local level, Chantal Sabourin, the oral health program manager with the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, explained the changes meant the EOHU would administer only parts of the program, but, that “we can help kids, absolutely.”

Sabourin explained the HSO core program is administered by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, and that anyone can apply online or my mailing the ministry.

She said the EOHU will screen kids to see if they are clinically eligible, and if there’s family income which meets a certain threshold.

Sabourin provided a number of 551 children/youth in the EOHU region (SDG and Prescott-Russell) who were registered in the HSO Emergency and Essential Services Stream and Preventative Services Only Stream for 2017. She said the number of kids in the HSO core program is unknown by the EOHU; the number is for the stream that’s administered by the ministry.

The ODA says that for over a decade, it’s been asking the Ontario government to find real, long-term solutions that ensure children from low-income families get quality dental care in their communities. It says Ontario’s kids have an urgent need, and that the government needs to step up and address its chronic underfunding of the HSO program.

The ODA says dental pain is the second-most common reason kids miss school, and that Ontario’s dentists have been doing their part in helping kids from low-income families, because no child should go to bed in pain.

But, says the ODA, ever since the province took over the administration of dental care for at-risk groups, funding for the programs hasn’t changed to keep up with demand.